“We have an old rule,” Vladimir Putin declared in 2025. “Wherever a Russian soldier sets foot is ours.” This decree was not just about land, as his country’s neighbors have learned. The Russian president also seeks to recast history, identity, and language across Eastern Europe and Southwest Asia.
For this photo-first feature, prolific conflict photographer Thomas Dworzak traveled thousands of miles to document the multi-country resistance to Russia’s imperial aims. To chronicle the impact of Putin’s war in Ukraine away from the battlefront, the Magnum Photos member began exploring the Russian border — from Norway to Kazakhstan — in 2023. Across a blast zone that extends thousands of miles, his camera captured protests, performances, museums, and military trainings, all gripped by the ghost of an empire that insists it has no boundaries.
Accompanied by expert analysis from foreign affairs columnist and former Moscow bureau chief Christian Caryl, this visual essay shows how countries from the Arctic, through the Baltics, and down into the heart of Asia have held the line with the menace next door — and what it’s like when the cold wind of war blows through this new Iron Curtain.
